You will need to sign on with your LLLID (La Leche League ID) before you can post. If you have never claimed your LLLID, create your LLLID now. To sign in, click the LLLID Sign On button in the upper right corner. Enter your LLLID Alias and click the button again.

Mucous in stool Help!

Hi all,,I'm hoping someone here can help me. My six week old baby has had mucous in his stool ever since my milk came in. He also grunts and strains and bares down pretty much all night long. He sleeps, restlessly, at night in his bassinet, but during the day cannot nap or get comfortable unless he is nursing, being help upright or in his swing. I eliminated everything but wheat, grains and chicken from my diet for a week without any improvement. I continued to keep dairy, soy, nuts and the gassy vegetables out of my diet since then, another three weeks, but the mucousy stools and gassiness and discomfort have not gotten better. I don't think he has blood in his stool, but I'm not sure how concerned I should be. H only stools at most four times a day, but it is always a diaper full of yellow mucous. Is this something he could outgrow? He has gained weight very well. For awhile I was frequently engorged so I did block feeding, per the recommendation of a LLLI leader, and I'm fairly confident he is getting the hind milk as he now regularly drains my breast. What else can I do. Or does anyone have experience with it just being a case of an immature gut?

Re: Mucous in stool Help!

I have a couple questions-1) does/did baby ever get ANYTHING besides breastmilk-vitamins, even? Formula in the hospital, anything?

Is this your first baby or do you have older kids who were also breastfed? Do you have any friends with a breastfeeding baby, or an experienced breastfeeding mom you could show your babies poop to? Did the LLL Leader ever see your babies poop? Because 'mucousy' is in the eye of the beholder imo. Nothing else you have described here seems all that unusual for a 6 week old.

You are going to end up eating nothing. If eliminating dairy, nuts, soy etc. did not help, that could have come back in to your diet as those are thus not the problem. Plus, issues due to food sensitivities via breastmilk are very, very, uncommon.

If there IS a problem, I would suggest ruling out overactive letdown aka forceful let down, which may or may have been helped or worsened by the block feednig, depending on how you do it. this (forceful letdown) causes funky looking poops way more often than diet issues.

Re: Mucous in stool Help!

with LLLMeg.

The sleeping issues you're having are all very normal. I think it's more unusual for babies to be comfortable in a bassinet or crib than for them to resist sleeping in those locations. My kids always slept in the swing, sling, or stroller, and my 2.5 year-old still naps in the stroller. And new babies do tend to have more difficulty with gas and poop than older ones- your baby is only 6 weeks old, which means than until a month and a half ago he never had to poop or pass gas. So it's understandable that he's still mastering the process.

Re: Mucous in stool Help!

Thank you both very much. He has never had anything other than breastmilk. It's funny you should ask if I've ever shown the stool to an experienced breastfeeding mom, and I did yesterday. She said it could be a bit mucousy, but really very normal. I guess I just don't have a great sense of what is normal yet, since, yes, I am a first time mom. It makes sense that pooling isn't "easy" for him since he just started doing it 6 weeks ago. He just seems so incredibly uncomfortable at times, and newborns I have been around before didn't seem that way. All the grunting, straining and whimpering in his sleep or awake makes me feel so badly for him!

Re: Mucous in stool Help!

Baby/kid poop is a constant source of concern and conversation among parents-and not just new ones! How much, what color, smell-And there is no doubt, if you have never seen breastfed baby poop before, it is certainly a new experience. There is also a pretty wide range of 'normal' for color and consistency.

For the fussiness-is it improved if baby is held, particularly kind of up right, in your or another' arms? Many babies esp. at this age are unhappy about being put down at all and/or al least unhappy about being laying flat. Again, that is just normal.

Last edited by @llli*lllmeg; December 5th, 2012 at 10:59 AM.
Reason: 'new ones ' not knew! I was tired last night!

Re: Mucous in stool Help!

Update: It seems his poop now has maroon streaks in it. I'm fairly certain it's blood, unless brown/maroon streaks in exclusively breastfed poop are normal? I'm afraid to mention it to the pediatrician because she told me at the last appointment that I would have to switch to formula if he had blood in his stool. I guess the real answer is that I need to get a new pediatrician, but how bad is blood in his stool? (I feel like a terrible parent even asking that.) I haven't had dairy in weeks, although I have had soy so my next step is to cut out soy. My father also had celiac disease, so if this doesn't work, should I try eliminating wheat? He is gaining weight and is generally a happy baby although he does do a lot of grunting and straining and at times cries as he is trying to pass gas or a BM. He also cronically has a stuffy nose. Any advice, experience, recommendations are appreciated.

Re: Mucous in stool Help!

are the streaks on the outside of the poop or mixed in? The grunting/straining makes me thing maybe he's got some fissures or cracks right at the edge of his anus that are maybe bleeding a bit when he poops.

FWIW, the pediatric gastroenterologist who ultimately had me switch to formula with my son told me that if it had just been blood in his stool he wouldn't have had me switch. It was the other symptoms that really worried him- weight loss, lethargy, severe eczema, etc. So A bit of blood here and there is not a reason to switch, no. Depending on how bad it is and how long it continues it may be a reason to try an elimination diet and try to figure out what is causing the problem.

I would start with cutting soy and see if that helps.

“We are not put on earth for ourselves, but are placed here for each other. If you are there always for others, then in time of need, someone will be there for you.”
--Anonymous

Re: Mucous in stool Help!

The maroon color is mixed in and the amount differs per diaper. Sometimes there are just specks other times there are signifiant streaks. They aren't bright red, which is why I wasn't sure they were blood, but they definitely have a reddish hue (hence maroon) if that makes sense. Maybe I'll see if the pediatrician will look at his stool when I take him next week and refer me to a pediatric GI. I guess I just always find myself thinking that babies have survived for so many years without formula. Is that really ignorant thinking?

Re: Mucous in stool Help!

I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves these days to get perfection. We end up trying to fix problems that aren't really problems in the grand scheme of things.

Amen!!!

Just want to chime in with my experience. DD2 had streaks and specks of blood intermittently for about 3 months. Her pediatrician saw one of her worst diapers, shrugged, and said that it was probably just garden-variety proctitis, possibly related to my oversupply, but that I could eliminate dairy if I wanted (because dairy protein allergy is the most common allergy-related cause of bloody poop in babies). She never suggested switching to formula, which is totally unnecessary when a baby is otherwise happy, healthy, gaining weight, and developing normally. Still.here's experience was really outside the norm for bloody stool babies.